Environment committee Of course, putting together a national park involves the interests of a whole host of players—provinces, as raised earlier by a previous member, and indigenous groups—but there has been interest in this one for a long time. It has grown a bit recently. Parks Canada remains very i

May 1st, 2017Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee Parks Canada has approximately 18 billion dollars' worth of built assets that require about two million dollars' worth of work every day, just so we do not end up the next morning behind where we were the morning before. That money will, in a sense, end up in two places. The mone

May 1st, 2017Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee Sure.
There are two points that I would raise in answer to your question.
In the first instance, money that comes to Parks Canada comes under a single vote, unlike in many other places where there's a division between capital and operating. Given the issues of occupational heal

May 1st, 2017Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee We're working very closely with all the provinces and territories. Any opportunities for co-operation there are ones that we will take very seriously. In addition to that, we're doing some unprecedented work with indigenous governments across the country as well, which will also

May 1st, 2017Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee We've received some correspondence on that. Some challenging decisions are to be made about the structural integrity of different historical pieces. At times we have to make some challenging calls on how best to protect them for the future.
I know on this one that the local fiel

May 1st, 2017Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee I have an answer for that. We have an excellent field unit superintendent by the name of Pam Veinotte, who is here today and would be pleased to get the information to the questioner and to set up a meeting to have a conversation about it.

December 8th, 2016Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee I'm pleased to report that some of the 40 are law enforcement officers down there looking for speeders and dumpers and other people like that.

December 8th, 2016Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee Thank you very much for the question.
I would say that setting up a national park is a breathtaking experience. Parks Canada has done it 46 times, and they are always complicated. Part of this is about the creation of a park from 1922, with the business of the Garden River excis

December 8th, 2016Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee Sir, in terms of the accomplishments, a number of things are going on, and I'll get to the numbers here in a moment. I may have to get back with the specifics.
We've begun, in partnership with the conservation authority, to offer programming. One of the biggest things that we'v

December 8th, 2016Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee Thank you very much for the question.
I think the first reason it's important is that the province was very clear that without changes to the legislation it was not going to transfer the land. Having an entire contiguous body of land under a single regime that is a known regime,

December 8th, 2016Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee The first I saw of it was when it was shown here, so this is a short-term assessment. I guess I would say a couple of things, though.
The first is that Canada's national parks are national treasures, and they're for all Canadians. We have learned, sometimes the hard way, over t

December 8th, 2016Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee It's incredibly important.
When we set up the first national park in the country, it was something that was brand new. Over time that has served to change the way Canadians see themselves. In the past, we created parks where the land and the natural treasures were. This time, w

December 8th, 2016Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee The draft of that management plan, of course, went out in 2014, and it would be replaced with another one in 2017. We've been working with the province closely on a number of things, mostly on the land transfer at this point in time. I can't honestly say whether or not they've re

December 8th, 2016Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Environment committee Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to address the committee as it begins its review of Bill C-18. I look forward to the committee's deliberations.
Rouge National Urban Park, set to become one of the world's largest urban protected areas, is special in its protection of

December 8th, 2016Committee meeting

Daniel Watson

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee We work very closely with the provinces and territories on this, because on the land mass, they are the biggest holders of the land there.
As the minister pointed out, it does need to meet the standards set by the IUCN, and we have agreement between the federal government and th